Johannes listened attentively to this interesting and extraordinary statement. He looked at the speaker respectfully, and tried indeed to recall him, but without success. "You will already have wondered that I should know about your adventures. But that is not so very marvelous, for there is some one else to whom you appear to have told them. Do you know whom I mean?" Johannes knew well whom he meant. "Really, you ought not to have done it, Johannes. When I heard of it I said at once that it was a great pity. The world is too coarse and superficial in such matters. People do not comprehend them. You must not permit that which is rare and delicate to be desecrated and contaminated by the foul touch of the indifferent public--the stupid multitude. Do you understand?" Johannes nodded, the pipe gurgled, and Mijnheer van Lieverlee took a sip of coffee. Then, in a lighter tone, and gesticulating airily with his slender, white hands, he resumed: "The veil of Maja, Johannes, obscures the vision of all who are created--of all who breathe and have aspirations--of all who enjoy and suffer. We must extricate ourselves from it. Will you have some coffee, too?" "If you please, Mijnheer," said Johannes. "A cigarette? Or do you not smoke yet?" "No, Mijnheer." "It is true, Windekind did not like tobacco smoke. But I do not smoke as common people do, for the fun of it or because it is pleasant. No! I permit myself to do so through my lowest qualities--the eighth and ninth articulations of Karma-Rupa. My higher attributes--the fourth and fifth --remain apart; just as a gentleman from the balcony of his country-seat views his cattle grazing. The cows do nothing but eat ravenously, digest, and eliminate. The gentleman makes of them a poem or a picture." A pause, accompanied by the gurgling of the pipe. "Well, as I have said, we should not cast before swine the pearls of our higher sensations and states of mind. We, Johannes--you and I, who have already passed through many incarnations--we are aged souls--we have already worn the veil so long that it is beginning to wear out. We can see through it. Now, we must not have too much to do with those young novices who are just setting out. We should decline, retrograde, and lose the benefit of our costly conquests." That all seemed quite just to Johannes, and very flattering moreover. And it was also now made clear to him why he got on so poorly with people. He was of age, among minors. "We, Johannes," resumed Van Lieverlee, "belong, so to speak, to the veterans of life. We bear the scars of countless incarnations, the stripes of many years--or, rather, let me say ages--of service. We must maintain our rank, and not throw to the dogs our dignity and prestige. This you will do if you continue to noise abroad all your intimate experiences; and I believe you still have a childish and quite perilous tendency that way."